World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2010, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 176 pages, 23.5 x 27.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Hammer / Los Angeles
Prestel / Munich
$190.00 - Out of stock
As New copy of this major hardcover catalogue on the work of Charles Burchfield, now out-of-print.
Although he lived next door to Niagara Falls, artist Charles Burchfield (1893–1967) chose to focus his nature-based art on the ground beneath his feet. Curated by artist Robert Gober, this exhibition features over one hundred major watercolors, drawings, oils on canvas, sketches, notebooks, journals, and doodles by this visionary American artist. Acclaimed by critics and known to a broad public audience during his lifetime, Burchfield is curiously under-appreciated today. Working almost exclusively in watercolor, Burchfield’s primary subject was landscape, often focusing on his immediate surroundings: his garden, the views from his windows, snow turning to slush, the sounds of insects and bells and vibrating telephone lines, deep ravines, sudden atmospheric changes, the experience of entering a forest at dusk, to name but a few. He often imbued these subjects with highly expressionistic light, creating at times a clear-eyed depiction of the world and, at other times, a unique mystical and visionary experience of nature.
The book includes drawings from his 1917 sketchbook, Conventions for Abstract Thoughts; watercolours from 1916–18 that were the focus of the first one-person exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, Germany, in 1930; camouflage designs from his tour in the army and wallpaper designs from the 1920s; watercolors from the 1940s showing the artist’s unique technique of expanding and reworking earlier works by pasting large strips of paper around them to dramatically increase their size; and finally Burchfield’s large, transcendental watercolours from the 1950s and 1960s.
Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield was organized by the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, in collaboration with the Burchfield-Penney Art Center, Buffalo, New York.
Edited by Cynthia Burlingham and Robert Gober, with contributions by Dave Hickey, Tullis Johnson, and Nancy Weekly.
As New copy, now out-of-print.
2000, English
2 clothbound hardcover books in slipcase, 448 / 132 pages, 33 x 25.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Scalo Publishers / New York
$300.00 - Out of stock
Rare first limited edition slipcased two-volume publication, Louise Bourgeois — The Insomnia Drawings, published by Scalo, New York—Zürich in 2000. Long out-of-print and collectible.
Insomnia has been a lifetime companion of Louise Bourgeois' night hours. Between November 1994 and June 1995, she has committed to paper whatever thoughts, memories, and images surfaced during her long sleepless nights. The resulting 220 drawings are the quintessence of all the impulses, sources, and motifs inspiring her work. "The Insomnia Drawings" show the artist's mind at work: drawings and sketches alternate with poems and aphorisms in both French and English, interspersed with notes referring to the hustle-bustle of everyday life. The series is a unique mirror of an extraordinary woman's life and work: beautiful, disquieting, passionate, inquiring, and imbued with a quirky sense of humor. As soon as the artist agreed to entrust "The Insomnia Drawings" to the Daros Collection, it was clear that this extraordinary work should be presented as a book. The result is a handsome slipcased two-volume publication, edited by Daros Services, Zurich. The first volume contains facsimiles of both the recto and verso of the 220 drawings. The second volume provides the reader with valuable background information on this complex and exhilaratingly beautiful work of art. Marie-Louise Bernadac, a leading Bourgeois scholar, places "The Insomnia Drawings" in context of Bourgeois' oeuvre, providing biographical references for many notes, and pointing out the leitmotifs of Bourgeois' imaginary universe. In a lucid and beautifully written essay, Elisabeth Bronfen traces the nocturnal mysteries of insomnia and places this work of art in a larger cultural context. Furthermore, the second volume offers a chronology and annotated transcriptions of all texts and notes. This landmark publication is a must for everyone wanting to take part in the imaginative journeys of one of today's most important artists. "The Insomnia Drawings" are part of the Daros Collection.
"She presents herself as a lady-in-waiting, silent and patient, with the night promising to save her from the array of desires such as love, faith, faithlessness, tenacity, ambition, while here sleeplessness prevents any salvation from her psychic distress. If in these drawings and texts the night is metaphorically conceived of as an expanse of water that might engulf her, while sleep would restore her, insomnia is what prevents any voyage into inundation. (...) Because her insomnia brings states of ambivalence to the fore, she keeps returning to the question of being suspended between two emotions-between plentitude and lack, proximity and absence, agreement and contradiction."—Elisabeth Bronfen
"L'art / ou est / la vie, / toi et vous / inspire / unafraid: Art / est le / contraire / du acting. Les paysages de nuit on / envahi les jours. Water is the / opposite of continuity / water can be the best but it can be worse / / M is for mother / in the water / it is subject / to change / or even to reversal."—Louise Bourgeois
Fine—Near Fine volumes, red and navy hardcovers, both volumes clean and unmarked, slipcase VG—Fine, only very light shelf wear to corners.
1997, English / German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 208 pages, 17.8 x 25.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kunstmuseum Bern / Bern
$80.00 - Out of stock
"Pictures, if they are to have effect, must have the tremendous intensity of silence [...] the silence before the storm."
First hardcover edition of Luc Tuymans — Premonition : Zeichnungen / Drawings, published by Kunstmuseum Bern in 1997 and long out-of-print. Beautifully designed volume on the Belgian artist Luc Tuymans works on paper, which, like his renowned paintings, explore people's relationship with history and confront their ability to ignore it. His haunting drawings are reproduced in colour and b/w, with texts (bi-lingual English and German) by Josef Helfenstein, Hans Rudolf Reust, and Lawrence Rinder. Concept by Tuymans and Helfenstein.
Very Good—Fine copy in VG—Fine dust jacket.
1974, English
Softcover, 130 pages, 17.8 x 20.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$280.00 - Out of stock
First 1974 US edition of this historical publication by Cornelius Cardew, a key collection/collaborative manifesto of texts and scores by a group of British avant-garde musicians compiled and edited by the legendary experimental composer.
"Any direction modern music will take in England will come about only through Cardew, because of him, by way of him. If the new ideas in music are felt today as a movement in England, it's because he acts as a moral force, a moral centre."
This is Morton Feldman's assessment of Cardew's importance, an assessment that took on prophetic status when Cardew cofounded the Scratch Orchestra in 1969. This orchestra was a culmination of the ideals expressed in Cardew's own music in the 1960s when, working in almost total isolation from the musical establishment, he patiently drew together a large group of composers and performers into experimental music through his own compositional activities and through teaching. This group became the nucleus of the orchestra.
The draft constitution of the Scratch Orchestra opens as follows: "Definition: A Scratch Orchestra is a large number of enthusiasts pooling their resources (not primarily material resources) and assembling for action (music-making, performance, edification).
"Note: The word music and its derivatives are here not understood to refer exclusively to sound and related phenomena (hearing, etc). What they do refer to is flexible and depends entirely on the members of the Scratch Orchestra.
"The Scratch Orchestra intends to function in the public sphere, and this function will be expressed in the form of—for lack of a better word—concerts."
This lively book on the repertory the orchestra created is as much graphic and visual as it is verbal and about aural events and happenings. After all, scratch music itself is meant to be perceived by the eye and all the senses—not just by ear—so the notation used in preparing the scores for performance might be graphic, collage, verbal, or musical. The scores in Scratch Music are composed of written words, photographs, maps, graphs, diagrams, musical flow charts, conventional musical notation, whimsical drawings, playing cards, crossword puzzles, and other devices. Contemporary musicians, artists, and critics have long recognized both Cardew's music and this text as hugely influential and significant. Scratch Music demonstrates the extraordinary richness of this particular compositional matrix, giving the reader some idea of what it is like to put on a scratch music event.
Contents: Introduction; Scratch Music—Early Outlines and Later Notes; Scratch Music; Key to Scratch Music; Scratch Music Catalogue; 1001 Activities; Appendix: Four Compositions (David Ahern, Greg Bright, Michael Chant, Roger Frampton).
Cornelius Cardew (1936 – 1981) was an English experimental music composer. A student at the recently established the Studio for Electronic Music in Cologne, Cardew served as an assistant to Karlheinz Stockhausen from 1958 to 1960. Cardew was particularly prominent in introducing the works of American experimental composers such as Morton Feldman, La Monte Young, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, and Cage to an English audience during the early to mid sixties and came to have a considerable impact on the development of English music from the late sixties onwards. In 1966, Cardew joined the free improvisation group AMM as cellist and pianist, alongside Lou Gare, Eddie Prévost, Keith Rowe, and one of his first students at the Royal Academy Christopher Hobbs. Performing with the group allowed Cardew to explore music in a completely democratic environment, freely improvising without recourse to scores. Cardew's most important scores from his experimental period are Treatise (1963–67), a 193-page graphic score which allows for considerable freedom of interpretation, and The Great Learning, a work in seven parts or "Paragraphs," based on translations of Confucius by Ezra Pound. The Great Learning instigated the formation of the Scratch Orchestra. During those years, he took a course in graphic design and he made his living as a graphic designer at Aldus Books in London. While teaching an experimental music class at London's Morley College in 1968, Cardew, along with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons formed the Scratch Orchestra, a large experimental ensemble, initially for the purposes of interpreting Cardew's The Great Learning. He later rejected experimental music, his creative output from the demise of the Scratch Orchestra until his death reflected his political commitment as a member of the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) in the 1970s, and in 1979 as co-founder and member of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist).
Very Good copy with some tanning and general wear.
1989, German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket in slipcase), 302 pages, 31 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
$85.00 - In stock -
First hardcover, slipcased edition of this major catalogue published in Germany on the occasion of the Morandi survey exhibition that toured Tampere, Leningrad, Moscow, London, Locarno, Tubingen and Dusseldorf between 1988—1990. Profusely illustrated throughout with a catalogue of Morandi's paintings and drawings, and documentation of a critical anthology, biography, bibliography and more. Edited by Marilena Pasquali with essays Werner Haftmann, Pier Giovanni Castagnoli, Marilena Pasquali, Flaminio Gualdoni, Giuliano Briganti, Michael Semff and Fabrizio D`Amico. German langauge.
Very Good, almost As New, preserved with VG dust jacket in original box slipcase. Scarce in the hardcover edition.
2019, English / German
Softcover, 384 pages, 20 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Ludwig Museum / Cologne
$85.00 - Out of stock
Family, clan, clan, gang, clique, clique, fandum, elective kinship, alliance, collaboration, network.
In the 1990s a new art scene began to form in Cologne. New galleries, magazines such as Texte zur Kunst, and the alternative exhibition space Friesenwall 120 were started. Alexander Schröder followed these developments from Berlin. Already as an art student at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin, he founded his own gallery along with Thilo Wermke. At the same time, he began collecting art from the 1990s and 2000s with his special eye.
Today his collection exemplifies the idiosyncratic and sensual side of this era, which was shaped by Conceptual Art. It demonstrates the significance of artist groups and collaborations in changing constellations at the time. Proximity and distance, connections and competition, inclusion and exclusion existed in productive friction with each other. Now the Schröder family has donated twenty-nine works from their collection, including large-scale installations, to the Museum Ludwig by artists such as Kai Althoff, Cosima von Bonin, Tom Burr, Lukas Duwenhögger, Isa Genzken, and Danh Võ. The exhibition Family Ties: The Schröder Donation presents these works to the public along with a selection from the Museum Ludwig collection. It focuses on art at the turn of the twenty-first century and examines the special conditions that existed in Cologne, also in relationship to New York.
The chronological documents (the works of art themselves, the invitations, flyers, fanzines, journals and texts from the 1990s to the 2000s) arranged on a timeline in this catalogue provide an insight into the development of art at that time in Cologne and New York. Selected essays and reviews reflect the at that time virulent theoretical debates; selective metadata point to drastic socio-political events and influential exhibitions. The catalog accompanies the exhibition Schroeder with works by Kai Althoff, Cosima von Bonin, KP Brehmer, Tom Burr, Luke Duwenhögger, Isa Genzken, Dan Graham, Renee Green, Ull Hohn, Hilary Lloyd, Lucy McKenzie, Christian Philip Muller, Nils Norman, Stephen Prina and Danh Vo.
2022, English
Softcover, 102 pages, 21 x 15 cm
Published by
Afterall / London
Walther König / Köln
$36.00 - Out of stock
In 1997, during a symposium at Centre Pompidou, pioneering queer theorist Leo Bersani presented a prescient critique of the assimilative tendencies that made “gays melt into the very culture they like to think of themselves as undermining.” For Bersani, queer activism, mired in micropolitics, had relinquished the radical task of reconfiguring the horizon of the possible. Later published as “Gay Betrayals” in the pioneering (and now unavailable) collection Is the Rectum a Grave?, Bersani’s intervention champions a truly disruptive vision of homosexuality, one that betrays the relational, identitarian and communitarian foundations of bourgeois heterosexual respectability through “antimonogamous promiscuity.”
Building on artistic research into the politics of queer spaces and culture some 20 years later, British artist duo Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings revisit Bersani’s polemic with a response in three acts. Through a kaleidoscopic array of drawings, preparatory sketches and egg tempera paintings, a narrative of everyday (homo)sociality emerges.
Leo Bersani (1931–2022) was an American theorist best known for his books Is the Rectum a Grave?, Homos and Receptive Bodies. Born in the Bronx, he graduated from Harvard in 1952 and eventually joined the University of California, Berkeley, where he became an influential teacher, remaining there for the rest of his career.
1988, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 24 pages, 21.5 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Exit Art / New York
$220.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful, extremely rare 1988 catalogue published to accompany the important solo exhibition of US-Chinese artist Martin Wong (b. 1946, Portland, US, d. 1999, San Francisco) at Exit Art, New York, November 5—December 23, 1988, curated by Jeanette Ingberman. Illustrated throughout with Wong's paintings accompanied by text by John Yau. Includes gorgeous portrait and biography.
Martin Wong is recognized for his depictions of social, sexual, and political scenographies from the US in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Poetically weaving together narratives of queer existence, marginal communities, and urban gentrification, Wong stands out as an important countercultural voice at odds with the art establishment’s reactionary discourse at the time. Heavily influenced by his immediate surroundings, the artist’s practice merges the visual languages of Chinese iconography, urban poetry, graffiti, carceral aesthetics, and sign language. His work offers rare insight into decisive periods of recent US American history as told through its changing urban landscapes, unfolding hidden desires, and complexities.
Very good copy with only light creasing and tanning.
2022, English
Hardcover, 262 pages, 22 x 28.5 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
Zeno X Gallery / Antwerp
$120.00 - Out of stock
Mark Manders – Zeno X Gallery, 28 Years of Collaboration offers an overview of the long-standing collaboration between the artist Mark Manders (b. 1968) and Zeno X Gallery in Antwerp. The review has been published to accompany his most recent solo exhibition in the gallery and highlights a number of important exhibitions and special projects in Belgium and abroad in which Manders was invited to take part from the 1990s to the present day.
Mark Manders has been working since 1986 on what he calls his ‘self-portrait as a building’. His oeuvre – consisting of installations, sculptures, works on paper and drawings – is ascribed the metaphor of a fictional building, divided into separate rooms whose precise shape and size is undefined. There is no beginning and no end. Manders strives for timelessness and universality using archetypal forms and familiar-looking materials such as clay, bronze and wood. His bronze sculptures and installations consequently appear more vulnerable than they are in reality.
With text contributions from Mark Manders, Frank Demaegd (Zeno X Gallery) and Marjolein Sponselee.
Publication accompanying the exhibition in Zeno X Gallery, which takes place from 3 September to 15 October 2022.
2018, Japanese / Italian
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 380 pages, 25.7 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Museum of Modern Art / Kamakura
$89.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the incredible Japanese Bruno Munari Retrospective catalogue, published on the occasion of the largest ever survey exhibition of Bruno Munari's work, that travelled across Japan in 2018. At nearly 400 pages, this profusely colour-illustrated book begins with Munari's early futurist paintings and mobile sculptures and carries the reader through his entire career, generously showcasing throughout an impressive archive of his innovative and iconic graphic works in book and poster design, sculpture, illustration, interior/furniture design, games, art objects, his Xerografia, and much more. It's all here! A wonderful document of material. Texts in Japanese and Italian, with a full chronology, and extensive list of exhibited works. Stunning.
Bruno Munari (October 24, 1907, Milan – September 30, 1998, Milan) was an Italian artist, designer, and inventor who contributed fundamentals to many fields of visual arts (painting, sculpture, film, industrial design, graphic design) in modernism, futurism, and concrete art, and in non visual arts (literature, poetry) with his research on games, didactic method, movement, tactile learning, kinesthetic learning, and creativity.
2022, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 256 pages, 10.9 x 180 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$30.00 - Out of stock
Newly commissioned writing and artwork on the themes found in the work of Cecilia Vicuña, including ecofeminism, indigenous forms of knowledge, dissolution and extinction, and exile.
What happens between the knots? is the third book in the annual A Series of Open Questions published by CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts and Sternberg Press. Each book in the series includes newly commissioned writing as well a selection of perspectives, images, and references related to the Wattis's year-long research seasons dedicated to single artists. Each book takes the work of a single artist as its point of departure and spirals outward from there to create an expansive and carefully edited ecosystem of ideas and voices.
This third issue is informed by themes found in the work of Cecilia Vicuña, including ecofeminism, indigenous forms of knowledge, poetry and politics, dissolution and extinction, exile, dematerialization, regeneration, and environmental responsibility.
Contributors
Gloria Anzaldua, Elvira Espejo Ajca, Erika Balsom, María Berrios, Marisol de la Cadena, Lynne Cooke, Miho Dohi, Ricki Dwyer, Silvia Federici, Tonya Foster, Phillip Greenlief, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, Brian Karl, Dionne Lee, Zoe Leonard, Rosemary Mayer, Koyoltzintli Miranda-Rivadeneira, Denise Newman, Thao Nguyen Phan, Frances Richard, Dylan Robinson, Abel Rodriguez, Oscar Santillan, Alessandra Troncone, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Ignacio Valero, Jacopo Cathrine Veikos, Cecilia Vicuña, Diego Villalobos, Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, Carla Zaccagnini
1978, English
Softcover, 268 pages, 28 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
National Gallery of Art / Washington
$45.00 - In stock -
First edition of Edvard Munch : Symbols & Images, published by National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1978, on the occasion of a major American exhibition of Munch held at the National Gallery of Art, November 11, 1978—February 19, 1979, "providing viewers an opportunity to experience the full range of Munch's genius, both in painting and also in graphic work, in which he was one of the virtuosos of his age. The catalogue essays examine the emergence of Expressionism in northern Europe and explore the relationships that recent scholarship has shown to exist between Expressionism and the stylistic imperatives of Impressionism and the School of Paris. The catalog reexamines Munch as not only an artist who created a new tradition but also as an heir to existing 19th-century traditions. Many of the works included on loan from 20 collections had never before left Norway, where over 90 percent of Munch's art remains." — Publisher. Profusely illustrated throughout. Texts by Arne Eggum, Reinhold Heller, Trygve Nergaard, Ragna Thiis Stang, Gerd Woll, and more.
Edvard Munch (1863—1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker and one of Modernism's most significant artists. His best known work, The Scream, has become one of Western art's most iconic images. His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dread of inheriting a mental condition that ran in the family. Unable to attend school, Munch's poor health also gave him the freedom to pursue his passion – drawing. His tenacious experimentation and intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century.
Very Good copy, light wear to covers.
2004, English
Softcover, 184 pages, 28.4 x 24.7
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$30.00 - In stock -
First edition of this now scarce Edvard Munch catalogue published by National Gallery of Victoria on the occasion of the major exhibition, Edvard Munch : The Frieze of Life, 13 October 2004—12 January 2005. The first comprehensive exhibition of Edvard Munch’s art in Australia, the exhibition assembled more than 80 works from across the artist’s entire oeuvre – including paintings, prints, drawings, and watercolours. Lavishly illustrated throughout in colour and b/w including texts by Elizabeth Cross, Ted Gott, Gerd Woll, Knut Ormhaug, Marit Lange, Gerard Vaughan, Rose Stone, Gunnar Sorensen, Munch Museet and more, plus a chronology, exhibition list and bibliography.
Edvard Munch (1863—1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker and one of Modernism's most significant artists. His best known work, The Scream, has become one of Western art's most iconic images. His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dread of inheriting a mental condition that ran in the family. Unable to attend school, Munch's poor health also gave him the freedom to pursue his passion – drawing. His tenacious experimentation and intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century.
Very Good copy.
1979, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 320 pages, 29.5 x 23.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Abbeville Press / New York
$50.00 - Out of stock
First edition, second print from 1979 of this major hardcover monograph on the work of Edvard Munch, published by Abbeville Press, New York. extensively illustrated in lush colour and b/w throughout, Norwegian historian Ragna Thiis Stang studies in detail the life and art of one of the founders of modern expressionism, treating his preoccupation with the themes of love and death and the feelings of anxiety, loneliness, and despair which they engender. Translated from Norwegian to English by Geoffrey Culverwell.
Edvard Munch (1863—1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker and one of Modernism's most significant artists. His best known work, The Scream, has become one of Western art's most iconic images. His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dread of inheriting a mental condition that ran in the family. Unable to attend school, Munch's poor health also gave him the freedom to pursue his passion – drawing. His tenacious experimentation and intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.
2022, English
Softcover, 232 pages, 15.2 x 22.9 cm
Published by
October Books / New York
$48.00 - In stock -
Selected texts that survey the full range of Kara Walker's artistic practice, emphasizing the work itself rather than the debates and controversies around it.
Kara Walker's work and its borrowings from an iconography linked to the fantasized and travestied history of American chattel slavery has been theorized and critiqued in countless texts throughout her career. Exegeses of her work have been shaped by the numerous debates on the very debates it generated. How, then, do we approach a work that has been covered by such "thick theoretical layers"? This collection is unique in emphasizing Walker's work itself rather than the controversies surrounding it. These essays and interviews survey Walker's artistic practice from her early works in the 1990s through her most recent ones, from her famous silhouette projects to her lesser-known drawings and lantern shows.
The texts, by art historians, curators, critics, scholars, and writers engage scrupulously with Walker's pieces as material works of art, putting them in the context of the sociopolitical and cultural environments that shape--but never determine--them. They include an interview of the artist by Thelma Golden of the Studio Museum in Harlem; an essay in the form of a lexicon, cataloguing key elements in Walker's art, by curator Yasmil Raymond; and an essay by volume editor Vanina Géré on Walker's use of historical archives. Finally, novelist Zadie Smith considers Walker's public art as counter-propositions to colonial monuments and as a reflection on colonial history.
Contributors : Lorraine Morales Cox, Vanina Géré, Thelma Golden, Tavia Nyong'o, Yasmil Raymond, Jerry Saltz, Zadie Smith, Anne M. Wagner, Hamza Walker
2018, English
Softcover, 216 pages, 255 x 192 mm
Published by
Surpllus / Melbourne
$40.00 - Out of stock
Comprehensive monograph on the work of Australian artist Damiano Bertoli.
"Melbourne artist Damiano Bertoli is best known for the ongoing series ‘Continuous moment’, a multidisciplinary practice that offers a paratactic investigation of artistic experiments, social projects and theoretical legacies that inform the history of modernism and contemporary art. At the centre of much of this thought and production is a delirious pragmatism that draws on material as diverse as Pablo Picasso’s 1941 surrealist play Le desire attrape par la queue (Desire caught by the tail), originally performed under the shadow of Nazi occupation, the aspirational practices of Superstudio (1966–78), which sought to live without architecture, and the occultism of the homicidal sect led by Charles ‘Willis’ Manson. What is decisive, in any case, is that for Bertoli the unity of this practice resides in a display methodology that echoes a number of avant-garde principles that question the backward looking gaze." - Nik Papas
Published by Surpllus. Designed by Ziga Testen, Edited by Brad Haylock.
Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and black and white, with accompanying essays by Justin Clemens, Helen Hughes, Helen Johnson, Nik Papas, Chris Sharp, Liza Vasiliou.
1965, French
Softcover, 16 pages, 26.5 x 18.0 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Galerie Ileana Sonnabend / Paris
$100.00 - Out of stock
Scarce copy of the first international catalogue to appear on the work of the great American artist Lee Bontecou. Published to accompany her solo exhibition at Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Paris, in 1965. Monochrome illustrations of Bontecou's sculptures throughout, alongside essays by Gillo Dorfles, Gerald Gassiot-Talabot, and Annette Michelson, and bio.
One of the most widely recognized female artists of the 1960s, Lee Bontecou creates welded wall reliefs, hanging sculptures, and miniature, mystical drawings that reflect her interest in natural and man-made forms. Brown and black in tone and often with ominous, organic voids at their centers, her large-scale patchwork accumulations of canvas, leather, wire mesh, and muslin recall nests, machines, ancient architecture, and the human body. She constructs her massive, free-hanging forms from constellations of steel, shaped canvas, porcelain curios, and explosive lengths of wire that reach far into space. Through such works, Bontecou has sought to capture “as much of life as possible—no barriers—no boundaries—all freedom in every sense,” she says.
Very Good copy, no creasing and only light edge tanning.
2022, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 168 pages, 25 x 19.6 cm
Published by
Pace / New York
$80.00 - In stock -
Text by Agnes Martin, Durga Chew-Bose, Olivia Laing, Bruce Hainley, Andria Hickey, Marc Glimcher.
This handsomely designed, concise volume celebrates Agnes Martin’s pursuit of beauty, happiness and innocence in her nonobjective art created while living in the desert of New Mexico. From her multicolored striped works to compositions of color-washed bands defined by hand-drawn lines, to the deep gray Black Paintings that characterized her work in the late 1980s, Martin’s treatment of color in each of these phases is examined.
A particular emphasis is placed on the latter half of her career and the broadening vision that developed during her years working in the desert, which crystalized her quest to deepen her understanding of the essence of painting, unattached to emotion or subject, yet radiant and meditative in its pure abstraction.
With editorial contributions by a selection of writers whose cross-genre works span art writing, essay and memoir, this book expands an approach to Martin’s paintings beyond a purely art historical lens, bringing new voices into the conversations around her career, inviting a rediscovery of her enduring legacy. An essay by author Durga Chew-Bose provides a poetic exploration of color; the writer Olivia Laing (author of The Lonely City) discusses the nature of solitude in her text; and Bruce Hainley uses a 1974 essay by Jill Johnston as a jumping-off point to delve into Martin's life during her years in New Mexico.
1993, English / German
Softcover, 176 pages, 24 x 15 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Hatje Cantz / Berlin
D.A.P. / New York
$290.00 - Out of stock
"I suggest that people who like to be alone, who walk alone, will perhaps be serious workers in the art field." — Agnes Martin.
Canadian-born American painter, Agnes Martin's (1912-2004) abstract works adhere to no catalogue of rules but appear instead as contemplative, intuitive signs. Her "floating abstractions," in which lines and free bands of colour emerge almost imperceptibly, can be reproduced only with difficulty. Her writings, on the other hand--although certainly not intended as programmatic statements--offer valuable clarity regarding her own works and poetic insight about art in general.
Since its original publication in 1991, this collectable volume of Martin's writings has been a fundamental document for libraries of artists, collectors, and critics. Rather than identifying herself with her Minimalist peers, Martin has aligned herself with the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and Chinese, asserting that "the function of art work is . . . the renewal of memories of moments of perfection." In combination with illustrations of her works, these texts--including lectures, stories recorded by critic Ann Wilson, passages ostensibly arranged in associative sequences, and "fragmentary ideas"--form an eloquent artist's statement by the creator of "silent paintings."
Edited by Dieter Schwarz. Text in English and German. Published on the occasion of the exhibition "Agnes Martin : Paintings and Works on Paper, 1960 - 1989," held at the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, January 19 - March 15, 1992.
Very Good copy of the scarce bi-lingual English/German 1993 edition, with only light edge wear.
1984, German
Softcover (staple-bound), 38 pages, 28 x 23.5 cm
Ed. of 800,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Zellermayer Galerie / Berlin
$45.00 - In stock -
Catalogue published in 1984 to accompany and document German artist Antonius Höckelmann's incredible aluminium foil sculptures produced between 1983—84, exhibited in survey at Zellermayer Galerie , Berlin. Illustrated throughout in colour with each work, accompanied by a short introduction text (German) and biography.
Edition of 800.
The basic material from which Höckelmann forms his sculptures is unusual: aluminum foil, which, when crumpled up, twisted and stretched, achieve amazing strength. In places, glue-soaked gauze strips are wound over it and colored with wax crayons. The artist forces his materials into the most unusual creeping movements. Forms that sometimes remind us of a gnarled tree seem strange to us at first; the aluminum foil, twisted together to form a volume, shows spiral formations that become labyrinthine furrows. And then the viewer may remember his own play with the silver foil of a cigarette pack lying around: If the bales and balls of thin foil do not result in miniature plastics, just big enough how they can be formed between the fingertips and further transformed and developed when a piece of foil is again twisted around existing thickenings? Seen in this way, Antonius Höckelmann's sculptures are "huge miniatures". As if under a magnifying glass, a whole new world emerges with unknown shapes and images never seen before. The big comes from the small, freed from all the obligations of dimensions.
Antonius Höckelmann (1937, Oelde—2000, Cologne ) was a German artist. Höckelmann trained as a wood sculptor in his hometown from 1951 to 1957 and studied from 1957 to 1961 at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin with Karl Hartung . His first gallery owner was the art dealer Michael Werner, who was also looked after by Galerie Zellermayer. He was later represented at various other galleries, such as Galerie Elke and Werner Zimmer, in Düsseldorf, Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich, De Weer Art Galerie, Outigem / Belgium or at Galerie Claude Samuel, Paris. In 1970 he moved to Cologne and studied at the Rolandseck train station near Bonn. In 1977 he took part in documenta 6, in 1982 in documenta 7 in Kassel, and in 1984 in the exhibition From Here - Two Months of New German Art in Düsseldorf. Many of his works combine sculpture and painting. Wooden sculptures and also sculptures made of other materials (bronze, silver foil, straw) were completely painted. Höckelmann died in 2000 at the age of 63 and was buried in Cologne's North Cemetery (Hall 22 No. 185).
Very Good copy.
1971, English
Hardcover, 97 pages, 25 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Edizioni 0 / Milan
$100.00 - In stock -
First edition of "Projects", the fantastic 1971 hardcover artist book by British Pop artist Allen Jones.
Designed and typeset by Jones, in collaboration with Roy Walker and Anthony Matthews, this lavish hardcover book is heavily illustrated throughout (primarily in vivid colour) with photographs, drawings, video excerpts and montages by Jones. Five of Allen Jones' costume/set design/art direction projects are covered in this book, including his work for opera (Mozart's "The Abduction from the Seraglio"), film ("The Playroom" and "A Clockwork Orange"), stage (two sequences from "Oh Calcutta!") and television ("Männer Wir Kommen"). "The text has been researched and transcribed from taped interviews with Allen Jones by Ruth Messina and Bonne Boston."
Allen Jones (b. 1 September 1937) is a British pop artist, best known for his sculptures, paintings, drawings, and work in set and costume design for film and theatre.
Jones’ exhibitions of erotic sculptures, such as the set Chair, Table and Hat Stand (1969), are studies in forniphilia, which turn women into items of human furniture. Much of his work draws on the imagery of rubber fetishism and BDSM. The sculptures in the Korova Milk Bar from the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange were based on works by Jones after he turned down the request by Stanley Kubrick to design the set for no payment. Jones designed Barbet Schroeder’s 1976 film Maîtresse.
Very Good copy, light water marking to end papers, not affecting content.
2003, English
Hardcover, 256 pages, 21 x 25.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Tate Gallery / London
$110.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this lovely hardcover catalogue, published on the occasion of a special travelling exhibition of drawings at The Drawing Centre, New York; Tate, London; MCA, Sydney, 2003 — over 140 important works from the Tate Collection organised, from William Blake to Andy Warhol, selected by the British artist Avis Newman and curated Catherine de Zegher. Newman chose these works because they demonstrated her interest in drawing as an exploratory or discursive act - ie as 'the nearest equivalent to the operation of thought'. The presentation of rarely-seen drawings by so many major artists gives way to fresh and startling connections between their work and new insights into their creative processes. Edited by Catherine De Zegher, this lavishly illustrated book features so many rarely seen drawings by artists, alongside interviews and essays.
Artists : Eileen Agar, Carl Andre, Jean Arp, Heneage Finch Aylesford, Francis Bacon, Aubrey Beardsley, Max Beckmann, William Blake, Pierre Bonnard, Constantin Brancusi, André Breton, British School, Marcel Broodthaers, John Cage, Paul Cézanne, Alexander Cozens, Jean Crotti, George Dance, Nathaniel Dance-Holland, John Charles Denham, Marcel Duchamp, Jacob Epstein, Luciano Fabro, Jean Fautrier, Barry Flanagan, John Flaxman, Lucio Fontana, Henry Fuseli, Naum Gabo, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Alberto Giacometti, Natalya Goncharova, Juan Gris, Richard Hamilton, Barbara Hepworth, Eva Hesse, William Henry Hunt, Giles Hussey, John William Inchbold, Gwen John, Jasper Johns, John Latham, Fernand Léger, Sol LeWitt, El Lissitzky, René Magritte, Piero Manzoni, Brice Marden, André Masson, E.L.T. Mesens, Henri Michaux, John Hamilton Mortimer, Barnett Newman, William Young Ottley, Blinky Palermo, Giuseppe Penone, Francis Picabia, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Elizabeth Rigby, Edward Ruscha, Kurt Schwitters, Albert Seba, Thomas Stothard, James Thornhill, Joseph Mallord William Turner, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, George Montard Woodward, Joseph Wright.
Very Good copy.
2022, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 28.5 x 23.5 cm
Ed. of 600,
Published by
Artink / Melbourne
$50.00 - Out of stock
André Piguet Selected Works on Paper 2014–2021 presents André Piguet’s enduring drawing practice. Drawings in the book have been selected and arranged by the artist, forming a rhythmic flow of imagery that invites intuitive understanding through thought-provoking visual connections. Piguet’s multi-disciplinary practice spans drawing, assemblage, painting and installation. The book hones in on the artist’s drawing practice, offering insight into his process and the medium’s potential. S.T Lore and Jack Willet offer a response to the drawings in André Piguet Selected Works on Paper 2014–2021, each writer contributing a significant new essay to the
2016, English
Hardcover (w. printed tissue dust-jacket), 205 pages, 23 x 29 cm
Published by
MoMA / New York
$85.00 - Out of stock
The incredible Kai Althoff monograph published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Edited by Kai Althoff with text by Rita Kersting, DovBer Naiditch, Yair Oelbaum, Constantin Rothkopf, Robert Storr, Rein Wolfs. Interview by Laura Hoptman.
Kai Althoff is one of the most consummate--and unpredictable--artists of his generation. A painter and a draftsman, he has experimented since the mid-1990s with combinations of unconventional mediums and exhibition formats to create all-encompassing environments that might include finely detailed drawings, collage, woven textiles, knitted fabric, soft sculpture, paintings, writing, video, fragrance and song.
Published in conjunction with a major exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, this publication presents Althoff’s work in all mediums made over a 25-year career. Created in close collaboration with the artist, the book features lavish color reproductions of Althoff’s most significant works. Contributions by scholars, art professionals and friends of the artist offer multiple perspectives on Althoff’s iconographically rich work.
A beautiful book.
Kai Althoff (born 1966 in Cologne) is a German visual artist and musician. Borrowing from moments of history, religious iconography, and counter-cultural movements, Althoff creates imaginary environments in which paintings, sculpture, drawing, video, and found objects commingle. Tapping a multitude of sources, from Germanic folk traditions to recent popular culture, from medieval and gothic religious imagery to early modern expressionism, Althoff’s characters inhabit imaginary worlds that serve as allegories for human experience and emotion. His image bank and painterly style also draw on the past, especially early-20th-century German Expressionism, reconfigured by introducing collaged technique.